Our next destination for the day would be the San Juan Bautista State Historic Park. At first it was pretty hard to find the mission due to the fact that the city of San Juan Bautista was having a pretty large street festival, which was blocking a number of city streets. Eventually, as we made our way through the fair, and after Mena had gotten distracted by some of the vendor tents, we discovered that the mission was actually right in the middle of the street fair. The mission is actually located at the edge of town, with the rest of [View Full Entry]

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Hollister Hills SVRA was the third stop for the day. We didn't spend much time here, as this park is primarily for off road vehicles, such as dirt bikes and ATVs. Interestingly enough, this park would be the busiest park that we visited throughout the day, and maybe one of the busiest parks we've visited throughout California. I am not quiet sure what that says about us as Californians. Maybe we just really love motorized vehicles. Anyways, while we were there, we saw vehicles zipping all around the place. Really, it was amazing that no one ran into someone else--since there [View Full Entry]

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The next area that we visited was Pacheco State Park, which turned out to be just up the road from the San Luis Reservoir. Like so many parks that we have visited, this one was pretty devoid of people. There were a couple of vehicles parked in the parking lot, but we did not encounter anyone while we hiked around the park. Pacheco Park is the last remaining portion of the Mexican land grant, El Rancho San Luis Gonzaga, which was granted to Francisco Pacheco in 1843. Since that time, the land was used as a horse and cattle ranch until [View Full Entry]

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On the third day of the trip we decided to head back to the Central Valley early in the morning. We ended up dropping off Phil at his house around 1:30am before Mena and I headed back to our apartment. Waking up the next day, we decided to explore some of the state parks in the Central Valley. The first park that we came across was the San Luis Reservoir State Recreation Area. This park is located just a few miles away from Los Banos and is not too far from Pacheco Pass. Surprisingly, the park was pretty empty for such [View Full Entry]

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The last stop on the second day was at Joshua Tree National Park. While at the Salton Sea Recreation Area, one of the rangers there was nice enough to give us directions to a shortcut to the park. Thus, we ended up actually going through the south entrance, which appears to be one of the least traveled areas. The first impression that I got from Joshua Tree is just how immense of a park it is. It literally seems to stretch on forever in every direction. In fact, the park consists of a staggering 794,000 acres. Joshua Tree was designated as [View Full Entry]

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The next stop on the second day of our trip was the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. The first area that we stopped at was Bombay Beach, which has to be one of the most unique beaches I have ever been to. The scenery from this area looks like it was ripped out of some post-apocalyptic America movie. Really, the images of this whole area are so surreal. There are a number of shacks (homes?) that are in shambles and look like that they are being swallowed up by the beach. In fact, the look like mere skeletons of houses. Also, [View Full Entry]

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One of the first stops on the second day of our adventure was the Salton Sea National Refuge, which was the main goal of the trip in the first place. The Salton Sea is an interesting and unique place at the very least. As we drove along the length of the Salton Sea, which is the largest lake in California and is about 35 miles in length, we saw many people at its beaches. However, even though it was over a 100 degrees outside not a single person was swimming. This was probably primarily due to the amount of agricultural and [View Full Entry]

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The next stop on our trip was to a place in Buena Park called Medieval Times. The stop to this place was Mena's idea, and I must admit it took some doing to sell me on the idea---not to mention the omission of some key details (like a lack of silverware). In the end, I decided to go because I had never been there before and in my mind I was thinking of something similar to the scene in The Cable Guy. It turns out that I wasn't too far off on that one. We ending up making it through L.A.'s [View Full Entry]

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The next destination on my spring break trip is a bit of a conundrum because on the official California State Parks map that I have it is listed as a California State Recreation Area, but when you go to the parks department website, the area is not listed anywhere on the site. The lake is also included as part of the massive Angeles National Forest, which consists of 650,000 acres. While driving through the grapevine, it was pretty easy to see Pyramid Lake from the freeway. Obviously, since I want to see as many wilderness areas of California as possible, I [View Full Entry]

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This is the first entry for my spring break trip 2009. Really, this is the first time I have taken a road trip on spring break, so I was actually pretty excited. Three of us ended up going the trip. Myself, my girlfriend, Mena, and my good friend, Phil. I also need to mention that the car rental that we ended up with was a Toyota Prius, which turned out to be a totally sweet car. I swear it was almost too much fun just trying to see how high you could the mpg display to read. Anyways, the initial goal [View Full Entry]

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